


Secrets

by DyeingRoses



Series: dirth ma, harellan [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 00:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17111234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyeingRoses/pseuds/DyeingRoses
Summary: The Dread Wolf locked them all away—but even the best of plans can't be hidden from the keeper of secrets.





	Secrets

The years pass slowly, flickering with every second, and Dirthamen continues his vigil over the waking world.  Here, surrounded by echoes and nightmares, he watches dreamers pass through to wander.  Some to go mad.  Simple thoughts pass his prison, the dreams of the unconnected and with them the wishes and hopes of thousands.

The People still call to him, and he has yet to decide how it makes him feel.  Over time, their prayers dim, but when one utters his name, he listens, unable to speak in return.

A prison to keep him silent.  One of his own making.

Oh, Fen’Harel, you might be clever, but your secrets were never yours to keep.

Occasionally, he dons faces, crafting masks from nothing just to see a reflection in the Fade.  None quite match, but he decides that it hardly matters if they do.  Physicality is for the freed.  After all, even if he could travel through the Beyond—the word still fills him with unease—his chains would follow.

He does travel, sometimes, when the whispers get to be too much.  Always wary of the wolf prowling the same pathways, Dirthamen looks into memories and breathes in dreams.  At times, he visits the echoes of temples, and the despair settles in too quickly.  Move on, he murmurs to himself, move on.

Many more days he simply sits amongst companions without form, listening to their stories before they move on to greener pastures.  Sorrow never leaves, a shadow to his prison.  It hardly speaks and only murmurs when it breaks its silence to whisper grief.  Sometimes, Diligence will visit.  Those days are good; they remind him of his purpose.  Rarely does Wrath stay for long, too put off by the cloak Sorrow sets on his shoulders.

The worst days are when Sorrow sits beside him in a perfect echo.  Silence becomes his worst enemy.

Still, they are friends, all of them, even when Sloth comes crawling.  They all come bearing news, a welcome reprieve.  He learns of the Wolf lying in wait, unaware.  He learns from Wisdom that the Wolf wanders dreams, haunted.

Good, Vengeance hisses.

Dirthamen only sighs and lets Sloth drape over his lap.

He misses sunlight.  He misses running water.  He misses the wind on his cheeks.

He misses Falon’Din.

Those days, Sorrow departs and Grief screams.

He endures with Patience at his side, with the knowledge that he carries and the whispers of those beyond the Veil.  The People still come to him stronger, and the dwarves never wander into his home.  The horned ones—Qunari, he learns from Knowledge—bear strength he finds impressive and the humans’ resilience admirable.  A thousand years turns to two thousand, and he listens to as many as he can, a silent watcher and companion to the lonely and the forgotten.  To the loud and the optimistic.  To everyone he can hear.

They all have secrets, he finds, amused on occasion when affairs spill over into the Beyond.  Dreams are fickle things.  A little infuriating but entertaining.  While the Wolf sleeps, he listens and finds the evolution of mortals intriguing.  He watches the People forget under new chains and forge new stories from fragments of their history.

A broken people, he laments with Sorrow, but so strong.  He wishes he could walk amongst them again.

He wonders if the Others wish the same thing and shudders.

Mother lives in pieces, the Wolf lies in sleep, and the Others jailed and broken and mad.

Dirthamen supposes he’s not so different.  His cowardice and neutrality his own death knell.  But he remembers when the world forgets.  Maybe one day he can tell the People what he knows and let his ravens fly at their side once more.

He wishes many things.  He knows none of them will come to pass.

This is his fate for now.

 

* * *

 

 

Time passes as its wont to do.

He learns.

He grows.

He endures.

He finds that there are places where this Veil stretches thin.  With Knowledge’s help, he creates a map in his mind of each stretch and crack.  In the crumbling expanse of Arlathan, he finds puzzles and pieces and leaves some of his own.  He has yet to decide why he left a trail.  But it feels right so he leaves it be. The Eluvians lie broken, but he leaves a piece in each.  Plans? Vengeance asks of him when he does.

No, my friend. Vengeance scowls and asks the meaning of such tedious work, and Dirthamen can only laugh wearily.

Patience understands.  Patience helps in leaving traces of secrets in every shattered, every whole mirror.  It’s on a whim that he leaves a clue upon the borders of the decadent empire the humans will call Orlais.  However, he leaves guardians this time.

Secrets and more secrets, he hears the greed and pride amongst the living and breathing.  He might be imprisoned, he might be silenced, but he’s no fool.  He knows that if others unlocked the network the consequences could be catastrophic.

So, he leaves a key invisible to all but a fair few.  He’s learning how to manipulate the Beyond.  He’s learning to reach past his bars to touch the edges of dreams.

He will not abandon the People.  The Wolf can think all he wants. 

These are the People now.  So, he will help as much as he can.  Before the Wolf wakes, Dirthamen leaves a web stretched across the world.  Before the Wolf wakes, Dirthamen gains allies in spirits and in the fair few he places trust within.

He bears witness to the People’s plight.  Sorrow weeps.  Vengeance seethes.  Patience places a hand on his shoulder, and Dirthamen breathes.  He loves these strange greedy humans.  But he is one of the People, and it will always be the People who will have his heart.

What the humans can’t see they can’t hurt.

The People don’t know its him, and he somehow finds himself alright with that.  They bless the Creators, and he is part of their whispers, and that is enough.  Yet, he still finds Envy skulking around his prison. He wonders what for.  Envy does not tell him.

 

* * *

 

 

The Blights hurt, he finds.  All his friends crowd around him during those painful years.  Negatives to his gift, he sighs, and hearing the screams does little to help.  Those years, he feels immeasurably helpless, and his prison bears scars of his turmoil.

Blights are secrets he chokes on.  Vengeance rails against the walls, Sorrow crouches in pain, even Patience breaks a little.

When a Warden falls and an Archdemon dies, they all breathe a little easier.  Guilt shadows Dirthamen for the years after.

 

* * *

 

The human land of dogs amuses him.  He wonders often if their Maker can hold a candle to a Mabari.  He shadows many there for a time, Curiosity at his side.  There’s something there—Mother, Mother, Mother—but he knows better than to tamper with the stirrings of a Blight.

Sorrow still tends to the scars burning into his hands.

There’s many things in the strange land that worships dogs.  There’s power building.  Fate-touched, perhaps, he ponders as he passes by dreams.  Knowledge quips that he’s not the Creator of Fate.  Wisdom wonders what the difference is.

He does not have answers for them.  It bothers him more than it should.

Besides, he must be more careful now.

The Wolf wanders, awake.

Dirthamen is two crows and the bears in the wild, but he knows better than to draw the Wolf’s eyes.  The Wolf thinks him gone and dead or broken and jailed.  Let him think that.  He does not need to know.  It is not the Wolf’s secret to keep.

Still, he watches.  Vengeance paces at his side.  Wrath dances.  Dirthamen waits.  He worries.  Does the Wolf not see?  Does he not see the People?

No, he realizes, stricken, the Wolf sees ghosts.

The worry grows, and Vengeance and Wrath pause their games to join him.

Together, they leave pieces and allies.  Counters to a wolf’s hunt.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s not infallible, Dirthamen knows this.  He knows his plans are not perfect.  All he can do is wait.  Hope passes by, more a shadow than a friend.

Yet still he plays this game.  A game the Wolf thinks is played alone.  But the Crows wait above the chessboard, black pieces to the Wolf’s white.

Patience and Dirthamen watch and turn north.  The stirrings of power are moving, and they follow.  The Wolf has plans elsewhere.  So too do they.

Dirthamen touches a raven and asks in silence to be an eye.  The raven agrees and follows the thrum of fate to a clan of the People to befriend a still young child.

Dirthamen sits back and waits.  Patience sits beside him.  Sorrow holds his hand.  Vengeance guards him.  The others watch.

Dirthamen watches the hunt continue.  He lets his own arrow fly.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to post this for a long, long, long time.


End file.
